In the space of just a few months Lucid Sight has already launched three VR games, but the indie developer has even bigger plans for the future.
This week the company announced that it has raised some $3.5 million in a Series A round of funding. Key investors included the likes of Rana Capital Partners, B.V. and Salem Partners. This money isn’t just going towards the development of more VR games, however. Along with new projects, the studio is also launching a VR Ad SDK, which will allow teams creating free-to-play VR games to monetise their projects through in-app advertising. Interestingly, the advertising itself will consist of VR and 360 degree content.
Take Lucid Sight’s first release, PolyRunner VR, for example. The free endless runner, which is available on both Gear VR and HTC Vive, included a 360 degree advert for the most recent Divergent film, The Divergent Series: Allegiant. The studio notes that the video offered a skip option after 10 seconds had played, but 30% of players still chose to watch the entire ad, no doubt helped by the immersion of VR. The VR Ad SDK will help others bring this form of monetisation to their own experiences.
So why should you advertise within VR? Lucid Sight reasons that anyone working on VR content of their own can only effectively communicate the power of that content within VR itself. The developer isn’t wrong, although mixed reality videos are also helping to showcase the power of VR on 2D screens.
But that doesn’t mean the team is getting out of game development itself. A staggering 20 releases are planned before the end of 2016. It could be that some of those are ports of pre-existing titles; PolyRunner VR is yet to make its way to the Oculus Rift, while Gear VR puzzler Gumi no Yume could also head to both that platform and HTC Vive. Earlier this year the company also launched a Space Invaders tribute known as Space Bit Attack!
With the year nearing its halfway point, you can expect to see more from Lucid Sight very soon if it’s to stick to that ambitious release plan.
